Republican lawmaker warns if party goes too far, abortion could hurt GOP in November

GOP Congresswoman Nancy Mace on Sunday warned that Republicans could pay a price in November if they don’t reel in extreme takes on abortion policy.

The Republican from South Carolina supports the overturning of Roe v. Wade but criticized bans that states have implemented that take measures such as preventing a person traveling out of state for care or include no exceptions for rape or incest.

Mace has been open about being raped at the age of 16. It took her a week to tell her mother, she said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” referring to her state’s requirement that a person report a rape — something she acknowledged might be incredibly challenging for a teenager experiencing trauma.

“I am staunchly pro-life. I have a 100 percent pro-life voting record. I do think that it will be an issue in November if we’re not moderating ourselves, that we are including exceptions for women who’ve been raped, for girls who are victims of incest and, certainly, in every instance where the life of the mother is at stake,” Mace said. “Somewhere in the middle is where we’ve got to meet.”

Mace’s warnings follow a stunning voter turnout in Kansas last week, when voters defeated an amendment drafted in response to the 2019 state Supreme Court’s ruling that the Kansas constitution protected the right to abortion. Fifty-nine percent of the more than 900,000 voters rejected the amendment — preventing the state Legislature from imposing strict bans — in the nation’s first read on how Americans feel about abortion in the post-Roe era.

The lawmaker also said Congress must play a role in crafting policy that Americans find “reasonable.”

“‘Handmaid’s Tale’ was not supposed to be a road map, right?” Mace said, referring to the chilling Margaret Atwood novel. “This is a place where we can be in the center. We can protect life, and we can protect where people are on both sides of the aisle.”